Germany will be without the services of two of their regular defenders for the trip to Astana, with both Mats Hummels and Holger Badstuber injured, leaving Per Mertesacker and Jerome Boateng to line up together at centre-back.

Both Bender twins have dropped out of the squad due to injury, but Sami Khedira is fit to line up alongside Bastian Schweinsteiger. Finally, Mario Gomez is fit, but Mario Gotze is expected to get a run-out in a false nine role. Lukas Podolski will play on the left with Marco Reus suspended.

Meanwhile, Kazakhstan will be without the services of Marat Shakhmetov and Azat Nurgaliev from the side who faced Austria back in Ocober.

Marat Khairullin should replace the latter on the left-hand side of midfield, with either Pavel Shabalin or Tanat Nuserbaev filling in for the former on the right.

DID YOU KNOW?

Kazakhstan have won just two World Cup qualifying games since making the switch from the Asian Football Confederation to Uefa.

The Central Asian nation also faced the Nationalelf in Euro 2012 qualifying, losing 3-0 at home and 4-0 away.

Midfielder Heinrich Schmidtgal was born in the Soviet Union, but moved to Germany at the age of two, later electing to represent Kazakhstan.

Germany have lost just two World Cup qualifiers in their history, the last one coming against England in September 2001.

Lukas Podolski has scored just two international goals since his last trip to Astana in October 2010. Another two strikes would see him leapfrog Karl-Heinz Rummenigge in Germany's list of all-time top scorers.

A total of 140 places separate the Nationalelf and Kazakhstan in the Fifa ranking.

Players to watch

The 33-year-old will need to produce a supreme performance between the sticks if he is to stop the likes of Gomez, Reus, Muller and Ozil from running riot. The Aktobe keeper may well be the busiest man on the park on Friday.

The Bayern Munich winger has undoubtedly enjoyed the best season of his career this campaign and has often been the man to provide for both club and country. If Germany find things hard at first, his gritty determination could see them prevail.

Editor's Prediction

Germany have have been forced into a couple of changes at the back, but Per Mertesacker and Jerome Boateng are hardly poor replacements, while going forward, they have enough firepower to see off anyone, let alone a team of little quality as Kazakhstan.